The Change: The Pitches That Have Changed the Most

The short answer for why we missed on Jacob deGrom on the way up was that he improved each of his pitches as he ascended through the minor leagues, often by changing the grip. He’s back to his old tricks, as only Anthony DeSclafani’s slider has gotten harder this year, and the other guys throwing the Dan Warthen-branded Mets slider are all doing pretty well with that pitch.

So let’s look at movement and velocity changes on pitches and see if we can spot the next deGrom, hopefully in time to have him on our roster before the true breakout.

Slider
Anthony DeSclafani has added four miles per hour to his best pitch, and though it’s dropping two inches less now, it still is getting good results (18% whiffs). If only his changeup had altered itself in some exciting way, instead of getting less fade, less drop, and getting faster.

Minimum 150 thrown, though, only the slider from Chaz Roe has added more drop than the one that Eddie Butler is now throwing. That’s exciting because Butler is a changeup-first guy, and a more exciting breaking ball could be hugely important. Adam Ottavino thought that a tweak to a current pitch and a change in philosophy was all that was between Eddie Butler and future success. Now Eddie Butler has a slider with above-average velocity (86mph, or two mph faster than average) and drop (three inches more than average), and he’s getting the whiffs to show for it (13% or average).

The weird thing? Butler’s vaunted change, which has above-average fade and drop and average velocity gap, is performing poorly right now. That said, it’s added movement this year — two inches of fade and a tiny bit of drop — and was his best-rated pitch coming up. He still has above-average velocity, and now he has a more interesting breaking pitch. He’s a decent guy for a rebuilding dynasty squad to put on their rosters to see if he can put it together.

PITCHf/x says that Sonny Gray’s slider is harder than it’s ever been, and he’s more than doubled his usage of the pitch since last year. Gray’s trick has been to do so while *adding* two inches of drop and cut, and only seven pitchers have added more drop. That’s meant 10% more whiffs on the slider this year than last year, good for second-best among sliders thrown by starters.

Paradoxically, this has helped him most against lefties, who are whiffing on nearly a third of the sliders they see. Maybe it’s about command — Gray used to see two strikeouts for every walk against lefties, but now he gets em to whiff three times for every walk. In any case, Gray’s changeup is not very good, since it’s so hard (87-88 mph on average) and has below-average drop, and so this third pitch has helped him to career bests in strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed. That’s good news for when he gets traded out of Oakland, too.

Curve
We know that velocity and drop are the most important facets for the curve, and nobody in baseball has added more drop to their curveball than Jimmy Nelson. And nobody who has thrown 300 curveballs this year has seen a bigger increase in swinging strike rate on the pitch, year to year. It’s really a completely new pitch. Nelson wanted a change of pace, and chose the spike curve because it wouldn’t mess with the mechanics of his slider much. Consider those things a success, since the curve goes five mph slower than his slider, which is getting even more whiffs this year.

It’s not clear that this is the missing link between Nelson and the acedom that some have predicted for the Brewer with the big fastball and the tough slider. Though his swinging strike rate is up a bit — 10.6% from 9.2% — his ERA and WHIP are still both near 4.0 and 1.3 respectively.

It could have something to do with the nature of the new pitch. Batters swing less at curve balls than any other pitch, and though Nelson hasn’t given up a home run on the curve this year, he’s only getting swings on 30% of the curves he’s throwing to lefties. He’ll have to improve his command of the new pitch — it still gets balls more than any of his regular pitches — in order to steal strikes while they’re not swinging.

Perpetual stuff-tease Danny Duffy has altered his curveball — only Max Scherzer has added more velocity to his curve than the Royals’ starter — but it’s hard to recommend him based on this alone. Yes, his curve is now the 13th-hardest curve among starters in the bigs, and yeah, his fastball still hums along at near-94 with top-ten rise that has led to a pop-up rate that is 50% better than league average. The fact still remains that Duffy has a bottom-twenty swinging strike rate that’s supported by below-average swinging strike rates on all three of his main pitches. The slider has good results, in 23 pitches so far, but we’ll need to see more of those before this harder curveball gets us really excited.

Changeup
Since Carlos Martinez entered the bigs, he has thrown smoke and has shown a great breaking ball. But entering 2015, he had bad platoon splits — he had walked as many lefties as he struck out — because he didn’t have anything to consistently get left-handed hitters out. And this year? He’s walking half as many lefties as he has struck out.

So much of that is because Martinez has massively improved his changeup. It now has three more inches of drop — the second-biggest change in vertical movement this year — and thre inches fade than it used to. As it turns out, “Baby Pedro,” as the Cardinal is sometimes referred to, learned something from his fellow Dominican and mentor. Pedro Martinez counseled Carlos this past offseason, and the master gave the apprentice something that has made him an ace. It must be fun to learn such a beautiful changeup from a Hall of Famer that may have once had the best fastball, curve and change in the game, all at once.

Last comes the guy with the third-biggest drop in velocity on the changeup — Kendall Graveman. He’s subtracted two miles per hour off the change! Too bad, he’s also subtracted two ticks off the fastball, and the change is virtually the same.

Still, let’s give Graveman a shout-out. Every single one of his pitches has above-average movement in both directions! That’s probably how he gets above 60% ground balls on both the sinker and change, and average whiffs on the breaking balls. Below-average velocity hurts his upside, but if he went to the change and slider more often, there’s hope that he could still be a Brett Anderson, Chris Heston, or Kyle Gibson, and soon.

Each of these pitches is being thrown more this year, and each pitch has changed in movement. Like with Nate Karns and his changeup, you can call these the year’s most improved pitches, by outcomes and movement.